The Tempered Radical

Admongo.gov

Welcome to Admongo where advertising is all around you. Online. Outside. On television. Who makes ads? How do they work? What do they want you to do? Here, you will explore, discover, and learn. Can you make it to the top?

via www.admongo.gov

Here's an interesting site that I stumbled across today. Put together by the FTC, Admongo is designed to introduce students to the kinds of skills necessary for interpreting commercial messages.

In a media ecology where commercial messages surround our students, any tool that can help our students to develop a bit of interpretive savvy is alright by me!

I haven't played around with Admongo enough to be able to give it two thumbs up, but I do know that it fills a gap in my instructional presentation and it's caught my attention with clever graphics.

I think it's got potential, that's for sure.

New Slide: School's Epic Data Fail

I wanted to be a bit visually creative today, so I put a slide together to go with my Your Data Dream, My Data Nightmare post.  Hope you enjoy it:

Download Slide_DataFailure

Book Review: Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap

In preparation for our upcoming conversation with Rick and Becky DuFour on the steps that schools can take to develop effective systems of intervention that reach beyond the classroom, I just finished reading their newest book, Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap.

Here’s my review:

I’ll never forget the day that I interviewed to work at Salem Middle School almost six years ago.  “We’re planning on creating a professional learning community,” then principal Matt Wight said to me, “and we’re going to use Professional Learning Communities at Work as our guide.”

Wanting the job at Salem very, very badly, I stopped by the Barnes and Noble on the way home to pick up what has turned out to be one of Rick DuFour’s most popular titles.  I figured reading and reviewing it over the weekend would be a good way to impress the new bossman. 

Not only was my principal impressed, it wasn’t long before I fell in love with DuFour’s vision for schools.  Throughout PLCs at Work, DuFour argues that the key to improving education rests in the hearts and minds of classroom teachers working collectively to study their practice.

That’s an easy argument to embrace for a teacher-leader type like me who is proud of what I know and can do!

But I’ve got to say that I’ve spent parts of the past six years incredibly frustrated because even though our school has worked hard to polish our collaborative practices, we’ve struggled to craft the kinds of school-wide systems of intervention that DuFour briefly mentioned as the key to success in PLCs at Work. 

Intervention—for struggling learners and high achievers—has primarily remained the job of the classroom teacher in our school, and that’s gotten progressively harder because our classrooms seem to get more diverse every year.  Differentiation alone just isn’t enough to meet the needs of everyone.

I suspect that our struggles are not unique, though.  After all, until recently, there haven’t been many practical examples—in DuFour’s early writings or in schools and districts—of systems of intervention that principals and district level leaders could use as models. 

Which is why Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap is such a valuable contribution to the literature surrounding the professional learning community movement.

Learning about Interventions with the DuFours!

Having worked in a professional learning community for almost six years now, I can tell you that nothing is more challenging for traditional schools than crafting a school-wide system of interventions. 

Even my building—which embraced the concept of ensuring success for every child from day one—has struggled to fully implement an effective plan for providing much-needed remediation and enrichment.

And it' ain’t like we haven’t tried! 

Like many schools, we offer opportunities for extra learning at every grade level and we’ve got a student support team that brainstorms solutions for students who continue to struggle after classroom teachers have done their best—but those pieces don’t always work together in a systematic way and they’re not always implemented consistently by every teacher, team and/or grade level.

Crazy, isn’t it?  We’re committed, but commitment alone hasn’t been enough to get the job done. 

Which is why I’m completely jazzed that Rick and Becky DuFour have decided to join me here on the Radical for another 3-day asynchronous conversation, scheduled for May 19th through the 21st! 

As two of the foremost experts on restructuring schools as professional learning communities—remember that in addition to their work with buildings across the United States and Canada, both Rick and Becky led successful change efforts in their own schools—they’ve got tons of experience with effective interventions.

In fact, the best part of Rick and Becky’s newest book—Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap—is that it is FULL of practical examples of specific intervention strategies being implemented in schools of all shapes and sizes. 

If Rick and Becky are willing to share even a small piece of their knowledge during the course of our conversation—something they did times ten during our first conversation back in September—we’ll all walk away more confident in our ability to collectively respond to the needs of every student in our buildings. 

So mark your calendar. 

Plan on stopping by our conversation—which you’ll be able to access from here on the Radical—for a few minutes each day.  Bring questions about interventions.  Share examples of what’s working in your building.  Listen to others working through the same challenges as you are.

There’s no two ways about it:  This is a great chance to strengthen your school’s intervention practices, and I hope you’ll join us!

(Blogger’s Note:  Even though I would have done it for free, Solution Tree—the DuFour’s publishing company—is paying me a bit o’ cash to moderate this conversation.  To learn more about my relationship with Solution Tree, read my nifty new disclosure policy.)

5 Questions to ask BEFORE buying IWBs

Interactive Whiteboards played a large role in my professional thinking this week after I received an email from a district level technology leader in a Southeastern state asking a question that caught me a bit off guard:

“Bill, I know you’re not a fan of Interactive Whiteboards, but what questions would you ask or criteria would you set if you were going to buy them?  How do you evaluate IWBs as an investment before spending your monies?”

Good question, isn’t it?  And I’m completely jazzed to hear from a technology leader who is interested in asking questions first and making purchases later!  Willy-nilly spending on silver bullets is literally sinking American schools.

While I have no money to actually spend—remember that I’m just a classroom teacher—here are five questions that I’d beg those with budgets to consider before dropping cabbage on Interactive Whiteboards:

How do IWBs align with your school’s vision for high-quality learning environments?  If there is anything clear about highly successful organizations, it’s that they align every internal decision with a convincing shared vision of the future that they’re trying to create. 

New Slides: National Poetry Month

I created a few more slides that I'll use as poetry prompts in my classroom today.  I figured I'd share them with you.  Hope you find them worthwhile and interesting. 

Original Image:  Mini Badge by Lewis Sherman, licensed Creative Commons Attribution

Original Image:  Creative Independence by Nattu, licensed Creative Commons Attribution.

 
 

CBS--and Maureen Langan--Should Be Ashamed

Be prepared:  This post has nothing to do with education. 

It has nothing to do with technology or policymakers or media specialists.  Heck, I'm not even going to write about Interactive Whiteboards.  I can't write about any of those things today because my mind has been completely consumed by one of the most shocking clips that I've ever seen on network television. 

In a lot of ways, it's surprising that I'm so riled up.  I hardly ever watch television.  It just so happens that I was home feeding my beautiful adopted daughter this morning and I couldn't reach the remote---the cat was sitting on it----so I was stuck watching CBS's Early Show. 

That's when a segment titled Comedians Joke About the Week came on.  After a few jokes about Sarah Palin, the comedians decided to tackle a topic that surprised me:  The decision made by a mother this week to send her adopted son back to Russia with nothing more than a note in his backpack explaining that she didn't want him anymore.  

The case is honestly heartbreaking----especially to a guy like me who worked 70+ hours a week for five years to raise enough money to adopt the child that my wife and I couldn't have biologically. 

I feel for everyone involved:  The 7-year old Russian boy forced to feel like a throwaway, the Tennessee mother who felt so unprepared for parenthood that she made a decision that she'll never live down, and the thousands of other parents whose long-awaited Russian adoptions have been put on hold as a result of her actions.

Honestly, there's nothing funny about the situation at all, so I was surprised to see it in the CBS clip.  My surprise turned dark when comedienne Maureen Langan made a joke that went a little something like this:

"This could be a good thing.  It could lead to an increase in domestic adoptions.  After all, sending a child back on Jet Blue is a lot cheaper than sending a child back on Air Kremlin."

To suggest that adoptive parents are looking for an easy out when times get tough is nothing short of insulting, Ms. Langan.  We're not celebrities you know, picking out new kids from new countries like they're poodles.  Instead, we're compassionate humans working to bring love into the life of another.

We struggle with our own inability to have children.  We worry about whether or not our adopted children will embrace us.  We work endless hours to pay crushing fees, we wonder how our families and friends will react to our new additions, and we wait---sometimes for years---to become parents. 

And most of us would never think about walking away from our children. 

Had Ms. Langan stopped there, maybe it would be easy to excuse her for pushing the envelope just a bit too far.  The problem is she didn't stop.  In fact, her next joke was even worse.  When speaking about the future of the abandoned boy involved in this case, Ms. Langan said something that went a little like this:

"Now that he's back with his drinking buddies, he'll be fine."

Are you kidding me? 

You're going to poke fun at a child who has lost his family twice during the course of his first decade on earth?  Don't you think that's a bit harsh?  Shouldn't we feel regret that there are children in the world who are stuck in conditions we wouldn't wish on anyone?  Is it really funny to laugh about a life ruined?

Did you think that was okay just because Artem---he's a real person with a real name, Maureen---hasn't got a family to stick up for him?  Cheap humor is appropriate when it comes at the expense of children whose birth parents can't care for them?

What's more, how do you think your humor looks to parents raising children born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, an all-too-common problem facing the children left in Russian orphanages?  Is it really okay to trivialize a problem that leaves thousands of children with serious emotional problems and learning disabilities each year?

Nope.  Not in my mind.

Who knows...maybe I'm overreacting.  Maybe you should ignore my post completely.  Maybe I'm an oversensitive adoptive parent.

Or maybe I'm a decent person taking a stand against tasteless comedy. 

That's your choice to make. 

National Poetry Month Materials

So my digital friends Bud Hunt and Kevin Hodgson have created a bit of a monster.  In honor of National Poetry Month, Bud is posting images on his blog every day to spark the poetic fire in each of his readers and Kevin is writing some amazing bits in response to every image.  

I stopped by one day just figuring to give the project a look and ended up getting hooked, writing more poetry in two weeks than I've probably written my entire life.  I also find myself driving around town revising poetry in my mind, and most nights, I can't fall asleep because I'm looking for just the right word to add to the next day's poem.  

And I'm having fun!

Download NPM 1

So how's this help you? 

I've also started creating poetry materials to use with my students when we track back in to school at the end of April.  While National Poetry Month will officially be over, I figure I'll try to hook my kids the way that I've been hooked. 

Not only am I planning to create a bunch more Express Your SELF slides like the one above to advertise, I'm in the middle of a series of lessons that I can use to help my students explore, write and record their own poetry. 

Here are the first two lessons in the series:

Download Handout_CharacteristicsofMemorablePoems

Download Handout_WritingMemorablePoems

Hope that some of you can use them---and that you'll start stopping by Bud's blog to write with us before the end of the month!

Creative expression is an outlet, y'all. 

Your Data Dream. My Data Nightmare.

One of my greatest frustrations as a teacher is listening to those who work beyond the classroom dream up brilliant plans for reforming schools that are simply impossible to implement because they’re dependent on new resources that no one is willing to provide. 

Take the constant drumbeat around “data informed decision-making” as a case in point. 

Poke your nose into any conversation about teaching and learning and you’re bound to hear “how easy it would be to improve education” in our country if schools were just willing to “confront the brutal facts” about student achievement.

The best teachers and learning teams are “hungry for facts,” prognosticators will argue.  They take an “action orientation” towards numbers, looking for “trends and patterns” that can inform their instruction. 

And of course, someone is BOUND to throw out the ever-popular argument that our schools need to take a more “business-like approach to data.”

Now don’t get me wrong:  I’m down with the idea that using data to identify and amplify effective instructional practices can change our schools.  Need proof? 

Check out the work my team has done to break down our curriculum into measurable pieces or the work that I’ve done with spreadsheets and pivot tables.  Heck, I even wrote a chapter on using data to drive decisions for both teachers and principals.

My beef is a simple one, though:  Teachers and teams in most schools are asked to do this complex work with nothing more than the most rudimentary paper-based tools.

Parents are from Mars, Teachers are from Venus

Blogger’s Note:  My infant daughter has been wicked sick all week long, so I haven’t had a chance to write anything new for you. 

Instead, I decided to post one of the first popular pieces I ever wrote---a bit on the parent-teacher relationship crafted originally for my school district’s website way back in 2005. 

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I had a great idea the other day -- I figure that if someone can make millions by writing a book attempting to explain the complex inner workings of the relationship between men and women, I can make a mint trying to explain the equally complex relationship between parents and teachers, right?

So I wandered over to the Self-Help section of the bookstore and spent a few minutes browsing through Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus looking for ideas.

The first thing I noticed was the book's subtitle: "A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships."

How perfect is that?! Teachers and parents across America will flock to the shelves if I can somehow help them to "get what they want" out of one another, right? And isn't communication the hardest part of the relationship that we share?

I've never met a teacher who hasn't been mystified by the actions of a parent at least once a year, and I'm pretty sure that parents can say the same about teachers.

Let's face it; we're two of the most complicated groups of people to understand -- and for $29.95, I'm willing to be your guide!

After browsing witty chapter titles like "Men are like Rubberbands," and "Women are like Waves," I found what is going to be the title of the first chapter in my book: "Scoring Points with the Opposite Group."